The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

I always find it difficult to begin conference recaps. To me, they always sound trite. They're the high school English class equivalent of the forced short stories that begin, "We packed up the car to go to the beach..." Thus, my complaining about beginning conference recaps is how I've chosen to start this one.

Luckily, there is plenty to talk about from SMX Advanced, and not all of the good stories originate at the Edgewater Hotel's bar. To summarise the current debate, there has been a bit of muttering that this year's show was too black hat for a leading search conference. Having spent most of the first day in the SEOmoz booth, I can't speak for most of those sessions, and I found Day Two's content entertaining and interesting.

Speakers told us to stop fearing Matt Cutts, his employer and the other search engines. Some also presented content that you won't find in an SEOmoz guide or the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Whether you take this advice is up to you, but it's nice to know some of the things SEOs are up to. I learned a lot this week. That doesn't mean I'm going to start... um... doing the things suggested at Give It Up. At the least, I'd never do so for a client, and I'd never recommend non-white-hat tactics in Q&A because that's not how SEOmoz does things and handing out black or dark gray hat advice to members would be wrong.

Just because you know how to do something or understand how it works, you don't have to implement any of it. In fact, I'd argue that you can't understand too much about your industry. And besides, we've managed to leave the world with the impression that every session and every presentation, including Give It Up, was black hat. That's not true at all. Not even close.

Again, I spent a fairly good amount of time at our booth and I didn't attend all the organic SEO sessions, at which most of these criticisms are aimed. It's also hard to address since Give It Up is the topic of the day here, and we can't write about what the panelists actually said for another twenty-eight days (and, if you were there, please avoid doing so in the comments).

Commenting in Lisa Barone's post about this topic, Danny Sullivan says, "I've literally been running through my head a "Have We Lost Our Way" post since Wednesday." and "It had content I was embarrassed to see presented, because it is not about the type of SEO I'd like people to learn or know about." I don't think Danny needs to be embarrassed: I hope that everyone at SMX recognises the downsides to risky SEO techniques and can make the distinction between what they should do for clients and what they can play with when they're the ones who stand to lose face and rankings.

The speakers I saw discussing gray or black hat stuff were also quite careful to explain their stance and emphasise that the tactics at hand weren't to be used on clients (unless, one supposes, the client asks for that specifically).

I also like the idea presented by overnight celebrity Darren in a recent post, where he points out that understanding black hat techniques is important if one of your clients falls victim to one of them. Love Darren or hate him, it's hard to argue that the first step to fixing a problem is understanding what happened in the first place.

All this said, SMX Advanced was never billed as a darker-hat-style conference and I can see why Danny is upset that it has received this tone of coverage. Our industry already has meet ups and conferences for that sort of content.
I'm just uncertain that we should get that upset about being offered information that people regularly keep quite close to their chests.

In other news, SEOmoz threw our (now annual) SMX Advanced party again this year, and it was another big success. I'm really judging "success" on whether or not I remember leaving the party, and it's a bit blurry, so it must have been another good one. Unfortunately, Chris Hooley was not around this year to provide a beer bong, but the function lived up to its reputation. We got to meet more PRO members "in real life", such as Kate Morris, Brent D. Payne and Richard Baxter. I got to embarrass myself by being thoroughly beaten by Brent, Tom, Will and Kate at bowling. If you weren't there this year, be there next time!

And the same goes for the conference as a whole. I don't believe those of you who weren't there should come away with the impression that it was a black hat show or that it violated some code of SEO ethics. It pushed people's limits, which is part of what "advanced" means. The negative press, both constructive and otherwise, will only make next year's installation better. Stop back in a month's time, and I'll tell you all exactly what I'm talking about.

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Comments
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I have to say that the three panels I attended were some of the best I've seen.

Bot Herding could have been a bit more advanced, but seeing PR sculpting from both sides, getting information on how and why to cloak or display different content for honest, white-hat reasons and hearing the standards adopted by the engines for crawling was a pleasure.

Will Critchlow and I agreed today that the Analytics Every SEO Should Know panel was nearly perfect. It contained the most advanced content on the subject and made nearly every person in the room take notes - the conversations and Q+A brought up excellent topics that were addressed quickly, efficiently and with very solid, actionable advice.

Give It Up was precisely what it should have been. There was a lot of Black Hat and Gray Hat material, but that's what it's SUPPOSED to be. Those may not be strategies you want to use on your sites, but how can you call yourself an SEO if you haven't at least explored that side of things. A detective who doesn't know crime isn't going to be very effective, and a lawyer who's never even heard of the dirty legal tactics that are practiced won't get too far. The same is true in our field - I think anyone who says they didn't need to know what was presented during Give It Up is doing their clients/employers/selves a disservice.

That, and it was by far the most entertaining, shock-filled session I have ever seen. Finally, finally, FINALLY, you get a sense for what it's like to hang out in a bar with black hats late at night. The admission price was a tiny price to pay.

Double extra plus thumbs up to that. There were really great sessions that covered properly advanced subjects. The black stuff was hugely useful for me to know and I got a lot out of knowing about things that I won't ever use.

BTW - Did anyone even hear or pay attention to my presentation on Give it Up? Except for 1 slide at the end with a throwaway blackhat piece, it was 50+ slides on effective, useful, usable, white hat strategies. Saying the panel was all black hat makes me feel like I either wasn't there, or my content was overlooked. If it's the latter, then either someone is trying to push a sensationalist, gloss-over the facts storyline or white hat stuff doesn't get press (and I think it might be a combination of the two).

BTW - Did anyone even hear or pay attention to my presentation on Give it Up? Except for 1 slide at the end with a throwaway blackhat piece, it was 50+ slides on effective, useful, usable, white hat strategies. Saying the panel was all black hat makes me feel like I either wasn't there, or my content was overlooked. If it's the latter, then either someone is trying to push a sensationalist, gloss-over the facts storyline or white hat stuff doesn't get press (and I think it might be a combination of the two).

Rand,

I already posted a comment about this on Lisa's blog, but since it makes such a good response to your quote, I'm going to paste it here too:

SEO ethics are nothing more than an extension of human nature. White-hat SEO isn't popular, because human beings are more greedy than ethical. There were a lot of advanced white-hat topics being discussed, but they don't stand out in anyone's mind. White-hat is boring.

SMX Advanced provided a broad range of information. It had something for everyone. In the developer sessions, I heard two different speakers talk about how to make Flash files crawlable and rank well. Can any of the self-proclaimed white-hats repeat that information back? No. It's boring. Microformats and schemas... or stealing content and automating links? Which one is everyone going to talk about?

SMX provided plenty of white-hat material, and I think it's a shame that everyone overlooks it. Look at the comments on this post! Even the white-hats want to talk about the black-hat topics!

Danny... there's nothing wrong with your conference. It is human nature that is to blame.

To all you "white-hats" that are complaining... you are no better than anyone else. Instead of dwelling on what's negative... you should be promoting what's positive. Instead of commenting on this post and trying to defend your false sense of good vs. evil... why don't you write up a guide on how to get a purely-Flash website to rank well?

To Google... The reason we invented JavaScript, CSS, Flash, etc. is because they IMPROVE THE USER EXPERIENCE. Is there some reason why your algorithmic understanding of these technologies is so pathetic? Why don't you guys just program Google with artificial human intelligence already, and make this whole issue moot? I'll tell you why... because you have limited resources and you have to prioritize. And just like the rest of us... you're first priority is self-preservation.

We're all putting ourselves first. We're all greedy. The entire human race is black-hat. Period. Everyone needs to just point at themselves. Well... except for you, Jesus.

I'm a bit offended Rand that you're trying to miscontrue my post and paint it off as me being sensational. I thought you had a bit more respect for me than that. That's unfortunate.

It's also unfair and sensational to say that I overlooked the value that SMX brought because I certainly don't think that I did. I believe I mentioned the Developer's Track inparticular and commented how much I loved it and how much value it brought to attendees. I'm also not the only one who feels the content wasn't as strong as it should have been this time around.

You seem to be taking this very personally, perhaps its because of your company's relationship with SMX, I don't know. The reason I didn't comment on your Give It Up presentation (or ANYONE'S) was because that's embargo'd. I didn't say that the panel contained nothing but black hat information, just that it looked mighty different from last year's panel.

Lisa - no need to take it personally. You know I have tons of respect for you, and like you personally quite a bit. I'm just expressing my opinion and my frustration with the article. Plenty of people who like and respect me (at least, I think they do) have criticized my pieces in similar ways, and I can promise you that I've deserved it more than you do.

Consider this an apology for being overly personal or overly harsh - that's not intended. I'm frustrated with the general perception and the post, which I think is wrong, not with you. As long as you'll have me as a friend, I'll always be yours.

BTW - On the "why do I love SMX so much?" question, I think I explained that last week, but in this case, I might be overly defensive because I organized two of the panels and sat on the one being most heavily criticized. That, and I've always felt that plugging your ears when black hat SEO comes up doesn't make you a white hat, it makes you a worse SEO overall.

I left you a message via cell, and certainly hope we can put it behind us and remain close. I know how defensive I get when people criticize my writing, so I should have been more empathetic from the start.

There was some good information at the conference. I agree with that. Not all of it was black hat either. I personally enjoyed the video from some badass SEO that I don't know the name of (shame on me, and I call myself active in the SEO community, blah). I also felt that Stephan Spencer's presentations were superb. Overall though, most of the white hat SEO stuff was pretty run of the mill.

I commented elsewhere on SEOmoz in a bit of rant fashion but I'll bullet a bit more my perspective.

Enterprise SEO: It's SMX Advanced talk about how to do SEO from within an enterprise level company. I personally met with people from Time Interactive, Viacom, NPR, etc. and things are different for inhouse people at large companies. An advanced SEO seminar should tailor to some extent to the larger companies out there that are trying to accomplish big wins like capturing keyphrases such as britney spears, george w. bush, etc. How to work to rally hundreds of internal employees around SEO. How to build a proper presentation for niche audiences that are internal yet consist of 50 attendees per session. How to work with multiple CMS systems, inhouse CMS, etc.

I personally really enjoyed the Bot Herding discussion it was great information and I'll be referencing the slides most certainly in the near future.

I also feel Rand does a remarkable job in digging deeper to uncover information than Danny does. Danny lets people off the hook a bit too soon. In the one session I had were Vanessa Fox moderated I felt she too dug a bit deeper. I Danny has to maintain a relationship with the guest speakers but in my experience you built up your relationship piggy bank so you can take some withdrawals from time to time.

Lastly, attending a conference in person tells you much more than reading the notes that are made. The non-verbal communication you receive when you are live is extremely powerful to understanding what the person is communicating overall.

The social networking aspect of the conference made it ALL worth it. The conversations I had in the bars, around the pool tables, in the bowling alleys, while sitting in a life boat at the museum, chilling with Rand, Geraldine, and Will made it WELL worth the spend. But the content could have been more advanced and without the need to black hat it.

KEEP THE BLACKHAT CONTENT!! Don't remove the blackhat content. Keep it there. It's the interesting aspect of the conference. BUT do add a lot more advanced white hat content as well.

Jane, I agree wholly. There was a lot said that I don't think need to be done to a client, but in the understanding realm, those things are good to know.

The conference started out slow (hat tip to Eric Lander on that one), and I know as I grow as an SEO getting the number of tips each year is going to lessen. But that doesn't mean the conference is less valuable. There is always something to learn. A new perspective to think about. And above all, great people to meet and learn from. Some of the greatest takeaways I had were tips from other attendees (thanks to Scott Polk of Edmunds.com and Jeremy Beneken of ApartmentRatings.com) and the great relationships formed.

It was beyond awesome hanging out with Tom Critchlow (master pool player and general badass), Will Critchlow (the older bro), FeebtheBot (Sex as he is known on Facebook apparently), Brent Payne (hilarious and great at bowling), Jane (of course who is coolerthan any other), Richard Baxter, and so many others. Even the infamous Darren Slatten (decent guy, really).

There were so many more, and I'll have my own shout out post soon, but Jane, this was awesome to read. Can't wait for next year!

Your lil' bro and lyndoman are already trying to get me to SMX london. Not sure if that is going to happen since I work for a US only company, but I will definintly try to get there soon. In the meantime, you guys need to come here sometime for SXSW Interactive. Many a reason to come to Austin. ;)

Damn! I bowl a 150 something and I'm an expert bowler. Sweet!! Keep in mind that was with a bloody thumb. Who the hell gets a wound from bowling that bleeds for 3 hours straight anyway? I'm not sure if I was light headed from the alcohol or the blood loss. At least my thumb print is all screwed up. Now is a good time to forge some checks I guess. "Oh bank teller you want a thumb print? Oh, sure here you go. . . but an inch of the thing is just a massive scab from a bowling injury." 30 days later . . . FBI agent states, "Damn. I'd be able to catch this guy if it weren't for that bowling accident." In other news . . . Brent D. Payne is twittering from the carribean. ;-)

i think you had it right when you said " Just because you know how to do something or understand how it works, you don't have to implement any of it." i have to admit i got a bit choked up when GrayWolf got up and told us its o.k. to push the limits, because that's how you learn, and that's how you build a better system. i had a great lunch with Matt where we discussed that unfortunately, google does not have much competition in the way of search. i tend to see the industry moving in such a direction that the responsibility will fall on US to force google to innovate. interesting responsibility!

in regards to matt and "his employer"... you shouldn't fear them, just like you shouldn't fear politicians or the police. i give matt credit for sitting in a room with us, taking our questions, and sidestepping them graciously. if the cops never knew how the drugs were smuggled across the border, they'd never know how to confiscate them and sell them back to the people. ;)

despite the kick-ass blackhat techniques, eh-hem, i mean "conditionally" relevant information presented at the conference, sometimes you have to give the people what they want, and not make them feel like every presentation is a sales pitch. i will admit that the organic sessions did float the cumulonimbus, but the paid and business tracks were much cleaner.

all in all, these things are really about "what happens at the bar", because thats where you really get to know the people in your industry. this was my first conference, and my big take away, was that this industry is alive and filled with some of the best hackers, i mean, most clever people i've ever met.

I don't realy get the all the posts about SMXa being all about the BH. As Rand stated, the Give It Up session is about things you wouldn't normally hear at a conference; of course that is going to be dominated by BH. 98% of the WH stuff has been beat to death.

On the other SEO panels, I guess there was discussion of some BH stuff in the link and bot sessions, but I think overall there was a very nice balance between the two and anytime a BH technique was discussed the presenter gave the disclaimer of dont try this at home kids unless you don't mind risk ( or have brass balls:) ).

Overall I think it was a GREAT conference. The main reason I went was because it was dubbed as being "advanced" which means we talk about ALL subjects in detail.

I only have 2 recomendations for Danny. Cut down on the number of presenters per session. 2-3 max from presenters that you know are good so they can get really deep into the subjects. Some of the best presenters where cut off way to short and they had a lot more to contribute. This recomendation may not be for all conferences, but definitally for the advanced one.

The other recomendation is waiters walking around selling drinks. Maybe a bloody marry in the morning and a beer after noon. It's all about serving the needs of your target market Danny. A man can dream can't he.

P.S. The SEOmoz party rocked! There's nothing better than hanging out with people you have never met (sober of course) acting as if they where your best friend to an almost inapropriate level ;)

Firstly, Give it Up was blackhat. Super blackhat. But it was also AWESOME and Rand is so right that you need to know this stuff if you want to understand SEO, whether you're white or black hat.

I don't think the other sessions were black hat. Jay said in his link building presentation that we should stop being afraid of Matt Cutts. I completely agree with that. Google tells you not to cloak but big sites do it, have been doing it and will continue to do it for ages to come. Why? It works.

Anyway - it's been interesting following the coverage of this year's Advanced from my desk, sofa & the train (God bless Twitter); as I've said in other spaces, I wasn't actually there so can't comment on what was or wasn't said.

What I can say is that at last year's Advanced I was a little bit disappointed with the content of many of the sessions and probably learnt more in the bar after the show. I think that having a variety of information up for grabs is likely to make for a more interesting show, especially when there is often a sense of deja vu when attending search events.

Personally I think that all the simmering anger bubbling up about this conference is basically down to the fact that I wasn't there to go shopping with and fall into plant pots...

You went shopping with a plant pot? Okay sorry, I know what you meant... :)

I like it that there was variety, too. Some of the stuff this year was the stuff you'd learn in the bar afterwards. When you're doing the sort of "new" stuff SMX is doing, I think you'll run into instances of ruffled feathers... but as we've said before, it's great that SMX isn't acting as a Pubcon or SES clone and is mixing things up. Again, it'll be better next year for the discussions about this year.

Well said, Jane! From the standpoint of an SMX attendee...black hat, white hat, who cares?

Attending a conference is about keeping up with your industry, sharing knowledge with your peers, expanding your network, and having some fun. Let's see...check, check, check, check! Hurrah!

What defines a conference is not the focus of the content, but rather its overall quality. A skilled SEO with good critical thinking skills should have been able to extract value out of any of the presentations given at SMX - black, white, or whatever.

For anyone who missed it, I strongly recommend you search 'natural search kpis' and start reading what Brian Klais has to say. As Rand pointed out, he (and the rest of the 'Analytics Every SEO Should Know' panel) gave a great presentation.

I know I'm a little late to the conversation but I wanted to add my 2 cents regarding SMX.

I was disappointed with the SEO track. Maybe it's that I come to SEO from a web development background where I was taught that a successful site involves Usability, Information Architecture, smart design and SEO. My perspective is that these things all go hand in hand and that the the user's experience is as important as anything else.

I had hoped that since this conference was "Advanced" that it would involve more of these concepts. I do not agree that "advanced" also means "shady".

I agree that it's important to understand the more blackhat techniques so you know them when you see them. However, I don't recall any of the blackhat information being presented that way. If a presentation had been called "Blackhat Techniques And Why You Need To Know Them" then that could have been useful. But that's not how they were presented. They were presented like a group of teenage boys giggling about what they were getting away with.

How is it useful for me to come back to my clients and say, "I think we should buy a bunch of spammy links and point them at your competitors?" which was suggested by a presenter, or "Let's buy a lot of domains, use an automated content generator to put content on them and point them at your site." How can we complain about SEO being considered a rogue industry when these are the suggestions that the leaders of the industry are making?

I think it's important to note that not all SEOs are rogues operating out of our basements trying to get links anyway we can. Some of us work for agencies with very large clients, the rules aren't the same.

Having said all of that, I did get a lot of great information during Developer Day. Vanessa Fox was a fantastic moderator and all of the presenters were very accessible and willing to talk.

Brian - what sessions did you attend? Other than Give It Up, which billed itself as black hat (and which, if you don't want to see black hat material or don't find useful, you should probably be choosing another session), I only know of one presentation on the Adv. Link Building panel that was shady. I personally put together Bot Herding & Analytics, neither of which were particularly black hat, and both of which I felt were fairly advanced. I heard that the Internationalization session was excellent, high level material and that the other SEO tracks didn't have any black hat content to speak of.

My concern is that you're taking the spot of black on the palette, and coloring the entire conference with it. Obviously, black hat stuff sticks out in our minds because it's exciting and interesting and entertaining, but I wonder if it's a truly fair assessment. Out of 22 sessions, saying 1.3 were black hat doesn't suggest to me that the conference as a whole was that way.

No, the entire conference wasn't black and I didn't mean to imply that. I can only speak to the sessions I attended. And if half of the SEO sessions that I attended contained info that was black then that's what I have to go on. Maybe that's unfair. I ran into quite a few people who were as surprised by some of the suggestions as I was, so I don't think I was in the minority. There's a reason why this has been a hot topic after the conference.

I think it would have been beneficial if during some of the more controversial sessions (linkbuilding) if there would have been some give and take. Say, if the moderator had asked some questions of the presenter or if the audience were allowed to do the same. This is what made the Developer sessions so valuable, it was a two way conversation rather than "here's some info, do with it what you will."

I think Brent Payne hit the nail on the head with his suggestions above. It would have been great to have some discussions around the challenges of SEOs who deal with larger clients. This is what I anticipated in an "Advanced" conference.

I think it's valuable to have blackhats, someone has to push the boundaries, test the algorithms and see what works and what doesn't. But there should also be a focus on those of us on the other end of the spectrum who have to strictly play by the rules.

And having said all of that, I still think it was a great conference. I will happily come back next year. My criticisms are meant to be constructive, not bitchy.